January is Divorce Season in South Africa

Divorce Season

Divorce Attorneys are being flooded with inquiries from unhappy couples following a festive season loaded with over-spending their budgets and obviously too much time spent together.

The number of divorces instituted during December and January is triple than that of the other months, according to top Cape Town Divorce Attorney Bertus Preller at Abrahams and Gross Inc. who handles matters in Cape Town and Johannesburg. “The number of enquiries from spouses about filing for divorce increases to about six times the normal amount during this season”, he said.

It is a well known fact that Divorces in January dramatically escalate, because of spouses being forced to spend time more time together on holiday during which time they come to the conclusion that they are completely incompatible. People often overspend on money during the festive season and, “when there’s a financial breakdown, often the whole marriage breaks down comes to a halt.

Social Networks like Facebook, Myspace and Mxit also light the fire for possible affairs outside the marriage; it’s so much easier these days to make contact with the opposite sex. “I see a lot of cases where men and women provide evidence of the other parties’ extra-marital affair on Facebook and Mxit”, says Preller.

An unopposed divorce settlement could take up to three months to resolve and would cost anywhere between R6000 and R12000. In bigger divorces cases, where there are large estates and the parties quarrel for every last cent, it can cost as much as R1-million.

“Altough January and February are the season for divorce in South Africa, I do believe that a lot of divorces are unnnecessary and that many couples can in fact reconcile, the first issue I always clarify with my client’s are whether a possibility exist to make things work”, says Preller.

Divorce and Family Law Attorney Bertus Preller already has more than 1500 Twitter followers follow at @edivorce.